Wildfire pilots

Flight Journal, Feb 2003 by Cooney, Brendan

When the Navy built the PB4Y-2 in 1944, who would have guessed that it would be used nearly 60 years later to fight wildfires in the U.S. West? Pilots fly this Navy version of the B-24 to within 150 feet of blazes (100 feet in wind and much higher when there are obstacles) and drop red fire retardant, which is stored in eight compartments; pilots can open them all at once or one at a time.

Negotiating the mountains in such a large plane isn't easy, and pilots are ever vigilant. "[The plane] will stall and fall when you least expect it," says Gordon Koenig, the captain of Tanker 121, which is owned by Hawkins & Powers Aviation in Grable, Wyoming. "It will get your attention. You just power up and pitch the load. You get rid of nine to twelve tons of cargo in a second. It almost levitates." The plane carries 2,000 gallons of disodium phosphate, a water-- based garden fertilizer, he says.

"It's a lot of fun," says Koenig, who has been flying tankers for 13 years. "You get to fly this heavy, old plane. There are no autopilots. We get to make our own decisions." Copilot Mike Flynn says, "It isn't like in the movies. Guys here will tell you when they're scared. At one time or another, it's happened to everyone."

The tanker pilots are a tight community, as there are only about 44 planes and 100 pilots on contract to fight wildfires in the United States. They consider themselves lucky. "It's more exciting than scary," says David Spliethof, pilot of a 1964 Navy-built P-3A Orion. The largest of the seven planes in the firefighting fleet based at Jefferson County Airport, Colorado, the Orion weighs 105,000 pounds and carries 3,000 gallons (27,000 pounds) of fire retardant. Though the planes are old, they're young in hours. The P-3A Orion has flown 15,500 hours and the PB4Y-2, only 7,100 hours.

"Firefighting is like a war," Flynn says. "We're like the bombers supporting the ground troops." We owe much to these brave pilots. -Brendan Cooney